All 68 passengers and crew died instantly in Chicago-area crash on Halloween

Oct. 30, 2013 11:17 AM

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Written by

RetroIndy@Indystar.com

At 3:56 p.m. on Halloween in 1994, a small commuter plane took off from Indianapolis on a 168-mile trip to Chicago carrying 64 passengers. The plane was a French-made ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop with a four-person crew.

At 4:13 p.m. the pilot radioed he was ready to begin descent at O'Hare, but controllers put him in a holding pattern because too many planes were trying to land and heavy rain was slowing everything down. American Eagle Flight 4184 would have to wait its turn.

At 5 pm. the tower instructed the pilot to descend to 8,000 to begin another holding pattern. But as he did so the plane suddenly lurched to the right. Both pilots fought for control of the plane and briefly righted it, but it lurched again, this time rolling over and diving at full speed directly at the ground. Flight 4184 was gone from the sky in seconds.

The crash site was a soybean field near Roselawn in Newton County, Indiana. Emergency crews rushed to the scene, but quickly realized there was nothing to be done. "There were no lives to save, no fires to put out," one of the first responders later said. And it was silent.

The crash had torn the plane into so many small pieces it was hard to tell where all of it was. From the air they could see only a few large pieces of wreckage, a small impact crater and tiny pieces of debris spread out behind it in a trail stretching about two city blocks.

The farmer who tended the soybeans heard about the crash on the radio and went out looking. When he saw how little was left of the plane he thought: "There's got to be bodies out there."

It was a gruesome night as rescuers slogged through the mud in a driving rain, and they knew their mission had changed from rescuing survivors to gathering body parts. The next morning they brought in gravel to make a 200-yard road out into the muddy field in order to get vehicles out there.

It would take several days to reclaim the remains of the dead and weeks longer to identify them. The FBI sent in a special team to painstakingly identify as many body parts as possible so that proper burials and consecrations could be made.

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The FBI's Disaster Squad was created after a similar crash in 1940 to bring the agency's expertise to bear in just this type of situation. In an age before DNA matching, FBI scientists used fingerprints, blood types, dental records and forensic anthropology to make identifications.

Two and a half weeks later, after all methods had been exhausted, the remains still unidentified were quietly buried in a Merrillville cemetery without notifying relatives. This was one of several missteps officials made in dealing with the families of the dead.

As for the cause of the crash, it was believed from the start to have been ice buildup on the wings, and this was confirmed by a Federal Aviation Administration investigation. The report blamed the plane's manufacturer, Avions de Transport Regional for not studying the effects of ice on its planes after others had similar problems. It also said the French Directorate General for Civil Aviation exercised inadequate oversight of the plane's performance in icy conditions. And it faulted the FAA for not disseminating timely information about flight hazards during icy conditions.

The FAA ordered new instructions for flying in icy conditions, and American Eagle improved equipment that breaks ice off wings.

Families of the crash victims had been frustrated and angered by the lack of timely information provided to them during the ordeal and their activism led to passage of the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act of 1996. That law requires the federal government and airlines to get information to families of crash victims faster and respond more fully and promptly to their questions and requests.

People who lived near the crash site were affected by it also. On the one-year anniversary of the crash members of the Lincoln Township Volunteer Fire Department in Newton County -- they had been among the first on the scene that awful night -- held a memorial service attended by grateful crash families. After the ceremony at the fire station everyone drove to the crash site where area residents had erected 68 white crosses, each bearing the name of a victim.